Word: tribalized
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...Pakistani efforts to forge a Pashtun opposition to the Taliban are falling behind the battlefield advances. With the death last month of prominent Pashtun war commander Abdul Haq--who was betrayed and executed by the Taliban while trying to recruit tribal elders for a revolt--U.S. hopes are pinned on Hamad Karzai, a pro-Western Pashtun nobleman who is in southern Afghanistan, urging tribal elders to back exiled King Mohammed Zahir Shah...
...story back. Pentagon officials considered a bin Laden escape unlikely but not absolutely impossible. A few days before, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld had offhandedly mentioned that bin Laden may have tried to sneak out of the country--possibly in a helicopter flying close to the ground and possibly into the tribal areas of Pakistan, from which he could head for a new home in Somalia, Sudan or Yemen. "They could go down one of the valleys and not be detected," Rumsfeld said. "It's not a bottle that you can cork...
...Rumsfeld may have been inviting bin Laden to make a run for it, knowing well that the escape hatches were slamming shut. American patrol planes watched the borders. Pakistan warned its tribal chieftains that it would punish anyone who gave sanctuary to bin Laden. Pakistani officials and American ground troops tightened their surveillance of refugees flowing out of Afghanistan. On Saturday, Pakistani guards at the Chaman border detained three Arab women and their two children trying to cross into Pakistan. The three women, from Yemen, claimed that their Arab husbands had been killed in the U.S. bombing as they fled...
...Outside Kandahar, some anti-Taliban forces mobilized behind Hamid Karzai, a commander who supports the exiled King Mohammed Zahir Shah. Karzai spent weeks working undercover in Afghanistan, drawing on his old tribal networks and recruiting chieftains to join the battle. His strategy was to sever the Taliban from its tribal links, winning over local chiefs with promises of peace and international aid. Karzai's men advanced from Uruzgan, north of Kandahar; on the other side of the city, thousands of armed men from southern border towns loyal to another tribal elder, Ghul Agha Sherzai, moved into positions in the hills...
...Talk is already turning to the future government, even elections. The plan is to call a Loyat Jirga, a national gathering of all Afghanistan's tribal chiefs to debate the shape of the country's new order. Atta says all the commanders are anxious to avoid a repeat of 1992 when, after defeating the Soviets, rival commanders turned on each other and fought pitched battles on the streets of the capital. "This time we want to have democracy," he says. "We have to keep the people with...